The prevent defense

The tackler dove late into the pile of bodies. The 11-year-old ball carrier at the bottom of the heap retaliated by calling his teammate "nigger."

The tackler told Rick Wilcox, and the coach did not hesitate.

"Go," he said to the guilty boy, pointing to the far end of the practice field at Forest Hill Park.

"Run.

"Too many people died, too many people shed blood fighting that word," Rick added, as the boy chugged past the other East Cleveland Chiefs teams practicing on the evening of Sept. 2.

Rick hated that the word had been hijacked by rappers and others who used it casually, even turning it into a term of affection. The word still burned him.

There had been nothing affectionate in the "Nigger, go home!" chants that greeted him and other black fourth- graders bused to the West Side to integrate Cleveland schools more than two decades ago. He had been shocked at the venom of children he hadn't even met, children who didn't want to meet him.

He wouldn't tell his players that story today, but he had to say something. Standing at Forest Hill and thinking about everything that lay below in East Cleveland -- the drugs, the poverty, the million chances to make a wrong decision -- he stopped practice and gathered the Chiefs in front of him.

He opened his mouth, and his grand father's words came out: Stay in school. Get a degree. No one is going to give you anything, but no one can take away your education.

Theodore Wilcox didn't lecture; Rick wouldn't have listened. But summer mornings spent fishing for channel cats and buffalo fish offered plenty of time for talk between the railroad worker and his grandson.

Rick's parents divorced when he was 5. His mother, Joyce Ann, moved her five kids around tough East Side neighborhoods. She worked nights as a nursing-home aide to be home with them during the day. Anyone who says you can't get by on five hours of sleep is lying, she told her children.

Rick lived for summers and holidays when his father, Rick Sr., took his children to his parents' house in Terre Haute, Ind. His grandfather opened the world of nature for his city-bred grandson. They camped and hunted; Rick relaxed and didn't worry about wandering onto the wrong block.

"Tell me about home," his grandfather said, and Rick talked about whatever problems he faced. The old man quietly let the boy know the right thing to do.

His grandfather taught him how leftovers from the master's table, pigs' ears and chitlins, became soul food. He listened politely while Rick boasted of his football exploits, then told him they didn't matter.

Only education mattered.

The Army veteran ran the household with military precision. His children and their spouses called him "Sir," but he indulged his grandchildren. Leave them boys alone, he'd tell their parents. Let them be boys.

As he got older, Rick grew distant from his father, whom he considered too strict. From the age of 12 on, he talked to his father only when he had to.

After graduating from West Tech High School, Rick played football for a season at the University of Akron, then attended Alabama State University before transferring to Cleveland State University. He had a son by a girlfriend.

He joined the East Cleveland Fire Department when he was 21, intending to go to school part time, but the job overwhelmed him. For the first time, he saw bodies and burned children and the charred remains of people's lives. School seemed unimportant compared with that.

He reveled in the firefighting camaraderie, so like that of a good football team. He found other mentors in the men who had his back and who trusted him to guard theirs. Saving lives and property in East Cleveland, fighting off trouble, felt good. School could wait.

He got married and had another son. Then, in 1994, his grandfather died of a heart attack at age 63.

At the funeral in Terre Haute, Rick and his father saw the void that had been left in each of them. They talked. Rick Sr., now living in Chicago, admitted he might have been too strict; Rick realized he still needed a father and his sons needed a grandfather. They reconciled.

And when Rick divorced two years later, he turned to his father for advice.

Rick had two more sons by a third woman, whom he did not marry. The boys live with their mothers in Northeast Ohio. Two of them play on Chiefs teams. He sees all of them often -- some three or four times a week -- and teaches them to think of each other as brothers.

He loves his sons fiercely, but he is not proud of how he had them. When he talks to former Chiefs, boys in high school and college, he tells them to wait to get married and start a family. Don't have children out of wedlock, he says, but if you do, be a father to them. And that means more than buying diapers.

Rick still hears his grandfather's voice. It says: Go back to school. Earn your degree.

He says he still is considering getting his teaching certificate and teaching in Cleveland or East Cleveland. There is more than one way to rescue people, and for once he would like to arrive before the fire starts.

** *** **

Shane Wynn, the star of the Chiefs, raced left, but before he could turn upfield, a Dove Park Panther dragged him down.

"He ain't got the legs," said a man in the stands where, on Sept. 19, he and other Chiefs fans braced themselves for the first loss of the season.

"He ain't got the legs."

Shane already had scored twice on long runs against Dove Park and two more touchdowns had been called back because of penalties, but Dove Park led, 18-13, with time running out in the second half. The Chiefs had time for only one more series of plays.

Since Dove Park keyed on Shane's running, Rick called for him to throw an option pass. It fell incomplete and two defenders slammed him to the ground at midfield.

Last chance. Quarterback Cody Martin lobbed a short pass to Shane 6 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Shane dodged left, but five Panthers closed in. He reversed field, shaking three of them, then dashed between the remaining two. He found some blockers, faked a Panther off his feet and streaked for the right sideline.

Two or three Dove Park de fenders appeared to have an angle on him, but this was a footrace now, and Shane didn't lose footraces. He crossed the goal line 5 yards ahead of the Panthers, the shoes he swaddled in white athletic tape nearly hitting him in the behind.

Dove Park got the ball back but only had time for a few plays. When time expired, Shane took off his helmet and dropped to his knees at midfield, his legs finally spent. Rick rushed out and lifted him to his feet.

On the sidelines after the 20-18 victory, the jubilant Chiefs huddled around their coach.

"Who are we?" he demanded.

"Crew!"

"Who are we?"

"Crew!"

"How we play?"

"Mad!"

"How we play?"

"Mad!"

** *** **

Robert Smalls, a starting wide receiver, wasn't on the practice field Wednesday, Sept. 29. He was in the Forest Hill parking lot, slumped against his mother's black Honda Accord, trying to sink into the cracked asphalt.

The Chiefs turned in their academic eligibility forms that day, and Robert failed everything. Rick took away his helmet and pads. No grades, no football. That's the rule.

Robert wanted nothing more than to get into the car and ride away, but Shon Axton had him cornered.

Axton, mother of Dearius "Meaty" Smith, the smallest and loudest player on the Chiefs, and Toni Martin, mother of Cody, the quarterback, were team moms. They brought snacks to the games, coordinated fund-raising, held sleepovers, took the players to Six Flags, shuttled kids and backed up the coaches.

"Maybe your momma needs to do what I did to Meaty," Axton said. "Come up to class and whip your behind in front of the class."

Robert occasionally lifted his eyes from the asphalt to claim the teacher didn't like him, but the women cut him off.

"Oh, now you got excuses. Get in the car," his mother said. He slid into the back seat, and Axton leaned in the window: "Robert, you write an essay for Coach Rick. Make it good. Good English and writing, too."

The Chiefs were unbeaten after five games, but Robert and another player couldn't return until their grades improved.

On the practice field, Rick wondered what it would take to get through to all the kids.

At the end of practice, he quizzed the boys.

"Do any of you know what the Middle Passage was?"

None of the Chiefs knew the reference to the voyage of the slave ships from Africa.

"How many of you know what the Jewish Holocaust was?"

Again, no one answered.

"But you can tell me what the Civil War was?"

The players nodded. That they'd heard of.

Go to the library, he told them. Look up the Middle Passage. Come to practice Saturday with the definition or run your legs off.

As he walked off the field, several mothers had him repeat "Middle Passage" so they could memorize it.

He shook his head. He could forgive the boys not knowing; they were young. But the parents, how did they know who they were, how did they develop a sense of self without knowing their roots? How did they pass it on?

He'd been lucky enough to have good teachers, like Miss Sumpter in fifth grade, who taught him about slavery and civil rights. It was the first time he'd heard of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass.

In the 11th grade, a teacher told him not to trust the textbooks. He brought in books about the Middle Passage and the slavery economy, subjects that the state-issued books dismissed in a few paragraphs. Read these, he said.

Rick did, and then he found the writings of Malcolm X and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They became his heroes, men who preached that black America had the power and the duty to save itself.

He couldn't understand it when blacks treated the struggles of their own people like it was something that had happened centuries ago.

All they had to do was look around East Cleveland. Did they think the fight was over?

** *** **

On the last day in September, the bright red pumper truck pulled up to Prospect Elementary School in East Cleveland. The sixth-graders on recess crowded to the playground fence.

"Coach Rick! Coach Rick!" the boys yelled. Ronald McCloud, Robert Smalls and Tony Longino, a defensive star, attended Prospect; Rick was here to check with their teachers. At least once a season, coaches pay unannounced visits to players' schools to find out who isn't doing homework, who's sassing teachers, who needs straightening out.

Rick went to a second-floor homeroom. In the hallway, the teacher gave him a quick rundown: Ronald was doing well, except he had detention for spitting in an elevator; Tony's behavior was excellent; and then there was Robert, who lost his football eligibility because he wasn't doing his work.

The middle-aged teacher sighed: "He has been a thorn in my side since school started. I've been on Tylenol. He's not doing anything for me. Tylenol 3."

One at a time, Rick called the boys out into the hall. First was Ronald, the spitter. Rick backed him into the doorway.

"[From] 8:40 to 2:40, this is your home. Do you spit in your home?" Fail in the classroom and you will fail on the field, he told him.

Tony, in the school uniform of dark blue pants and white polo shirt, got off with only a warning to get his homework in on time.

Next was Robert, who, his teacher said, just told her to shut up. Rick leaned in until he was inches from the boy's face. There was the sense that if it had been just the two of them, he would have had a fistful of Robert's shirt and Robert would have been pressed firmly into the wall.

"This is the same crap we went through last year," Rick said in a low voice. "You want to work your way back, it starts in the classroom. You want to even smell the inside of a football helmet again, you'd better start doing what you need to do."

He made Robert apologize to his teacher. Before he left, Rick warned them, "I'm never too far away. I'm right around the corner."

How long he would be there was something Rick could not guarantee. Already, layoffs had claimed some East Cleveland police officers; firefighters agreed to cut benefits to keep their jobs. Cleveland would take over East Cleveland's safety forces, one rumor went.

All of this made him think about Atlanta.

He loves Atlanta, partly because it's not Cleveland. Prosperous and growing, Atlanta has a large black middle class and leadership, and an entrepreneurial spirit he admires. The city is more integrated than Rick's hometown and is moving forward, while Cleveland and its poorest satellite, East Cleveland, slip backward.

Over the years, Rick had encouraged friends to move to Atlanta. They'd gone down and prospered, and now they urged him to join them.

He'd already taken the test to join the Atlanta fire department once. He planned to do it again when the season was over. It would be difficult to leave behind his sons and the Chiefs, but the temptation to escape East Cleveland and its troubles was strong.

** *** **

Robert returned the first week of October for the final game of the regular season. Since being suspended, his work and behavior had improved. Plus, his mother begged Rick to take him back. At practice, Rick had Robert and another boy suspended for bad grades stand up and apologize to the rest of the team.

"As young black men you have two strikes against you," Rick said. "You're in the ghetto, and you're young and black. The one thing we have to teach you is to make sure you overcome any obstacle you face. You have to learn self-control. Once you do that, you're OK.

"Five seconds of a dumb decision will make you pay for the rest of your life. How many seconds you think it takes to pull the trigger?"

Robert was back, but Shane was out. He was suspended from school for goosing a girl, and Rick benched him. The Chiefs didn't need Shane that Sunday; they won easily without him. Even Tony, who usually didn't carry the ball, scored twice. But Shane needed the Chiefs. He wanted to play so badly that he flopped over backward on the bench in frustration.

At halftime, he raced onto the field and laid down on the 50-yard line. "I'm on the field," he shouted.

Near the end of the game, the Glenville Titans, who concluded an unbeaten season earlier that day at a different field, filed into the stands, imposing in their blood-red jerseys. They looked bigger and older than the Chiefs. After the game, Rick answered their psychological ploy with one of his own. His players crossed the field and held up three fingers at the Glenville team. See you in the playoffs in three weeks.

The Chiefs also finished the regular season 7-0, and both teams won their first playoff games.

On Friday, Oct. 22, two days before the Chiefs' rematch with Dove Park, East Cleveland police made another arrest in the killing of Paul Nardone, whose body was found in the burning car in Forest Hill Park in August. A woman had been charged in the death, but police said 16-year-old Stephen Johnson gave her the gun, loaded the body into the trunk and threw the gun into the Cuyahoga River.

Stephen is the older brother of Tony, the Chiefs' best defensive player and one of Rick's favorites.

Tony, like many of the Chiefs, faces long odds.

His mother, a former drug addict, had been raising six boys and two girls alone in East Cleveland. Tony was her youngest and used to be a terror. Since he began playing for the Chiefs three seasons ago, his once-regular trips to the principal's office had become less frequent; he'd been there only once in the past year.

But on Saturday morning, when Tony found out the brother he idolizes had been arrested, he raged. Sobbing, he threw his shoulder pads and helmets around the house and ripped football posters off his bedroom walls.

His brother was innocent. He knew it. The police got it wrong. The police! The guys who ran the Chiefs' program, who said they were his friends and then arrested his brother. In that instant, he hated all the officers who had ever helped or coached him. He was never going to play football again. Not for the Chiefs.

His mother was desperate. She turned to the man Tony called "Daddy," the man who paid Tony's fees last season so he could play. She called Coach Rick.

Rick called coach Eric Brown, who was on duty at the firehouse, and team mother Axton.

Brown got permission to pick up Tony in a firetruck. Brown consoled him as they drove back to the station. Axton arrived and took Tony back to her house.

They calmed the boy. Don't quit. It would be OK. The Chiefs were there for him.

** *** **

In the parking lot outside the fire station Saturday afternoon, after practice and film study, boys surrounded Rick. They waved their hands in the air and jumped up and down.

"Coach Rick, take me!"

"Me!"

"Pick me!"

They clamored to spend the night before the game at the coach's house. Sleepovers were a team ritual. Sometimes the mothers opened their houses to the boys. Sometimes they went to Rick's place.

Rick picked 10 boys based on who had a change of clothes and football equipment with them. He made sure Tony was one of them.

Rick bought the three-bedroom brick house in Cleveland Heights two years ago, moving from an apartment in East Cleveland. He is renovating it one room at a time.

Large black-and-white photos of Billie Holliday, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie hang on the living-room walls. "A Great Day in Harlem," Art Kane's famous 1958 photo of New York City jazz musicians, hung on one wall; on the opposite side was a version of the photo taken in 2000, this time with hip-hop musicians.

The boys hated it when Coach made them listen to jazz.

With his girlfriend at work, Rick and the boys had the run of the house.

A heap of helmets and uniforms filled one half of the basement; a 60-inch TV dominated the other side. Some boys were down there on PlayStation while others lounged in the living room, watching college football. The glass-topped coffee table was moved out of harm's way.

Shane laid on a couch, text- messaging friends with Rick's cell phone, which had received more than 15,000 calls since Rick bought it 11 months ago.

Pizza arrived, and the boys toasted the Chiefs and their inevitable city championship. When things threatened to settle down, Meaty leapt into the middle of the floor and danced wildly before falling onto his back and flopping around.

The boys put on Rick's blue baseball cap, which hides his retreating hairline, and imitated him.

"You think I'm playing with you?" they shouted and "Y'all as soft as Mississippi cotton!" They mimicked his glare and stiff-legged stomp.

On the couch, Rick laughed so hard he fell over onto his side.

"Y'all going to have a lot of running to do Tuesday," he threatened.

During a lull, Tony, whose brother was arrested the night before, sat on the couch next to Rick.

The coach said nothing but rested his hand on the boy's head; Tony leaned forward with his elbow on the coach's knee and watched a football game.

The rest of the boys were giddy. They were away from their mothers and grandmothers; they'd traded in siblings for football brothers. They ran and wrestled and shouted and jumped on the furniture, and no one told them to stop or quiet down. There was nothing to worry about. Not tonight. They were at the top of the hill and trouble was down below.

A little later, as Rick watched TV in the living room, Shane and some of the others sneaked into an empty bedroom, jumped on the bed and shouted: